The Legend of Luke Steel
By Rell WebberAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Rell Webber
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-2229-5 Chapter One
I was four years of age when my mother, Arbella Steel, moved my two older sisters and me to St. Louis, Missouri. There our family resided in a fifteen-story housing project called Candlestick, which was located on the west side of the Mississippi River. Although it was not the most luxurious place for a kid to grow up, Candlestick was not far from that wonderful old Busch Stadium, where the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team played their home games. From the flat rooftop of our apartment complex, we could see the lights of the ball park and hear the crowd as they cheered for the Cardinals to pull another game out of the hat. We knew Lou Brock was going to steal another base, when the crowd began yelling, "Lou! Lou!" in unison. It was there atop Candlestick that I saw Roberto Clemente hit the longest home run ever in Busch stadium. Several years later, when I heard that the famed Cuban player had been killed in a plane crash somewhere over the Atlantic ocean, I felt as though I had lost a close friend.
Those ballpark experiences in my childhood while growing up in the streets of St. Louis were very special, and the memories will be forever with me. My mother had provided a happy life for my two sisters and me in St. Louis, and I grew up as a well-adjusted city kid. Yet there came a time, as I grew older, when I longed to know more about the place where I was born, about my relatives, and especially about my father, Luke Steel. His name was never mentioned around our household and I never inquired. Still, I wondered about my father and the family that Mother said lived in Mississippi. For the most part, all I knew of Mississippi consisted of what we were taught in school or what I heard from my friends who had been there. And these accounts differed greatly!
Some of my friends would travel down to Mississippi in the summer to visit relatives and would return with exciting adventures to tell. I loved to hear them talk of swimming in a water hole, riding a horse across wide, green pastures, and running through the middle of a corn row as the soft, freshly-plowed dirt tickled them between their toes. Of course I was given a more negative image of what life was like there from my school books: proponents of slavery, rebellions against equal rights for black people, and folks living in extreme poverty. These were the images that characterized the people living in Mississippi, where I had been born.
My first contact with my father's family came about in a most bizarre way. I was fifteen at the time and had just arrived home from school to find my mother sitting at the kitchen table reading a letter. I could tell immediately that something was wrong. Mother looked up at me, trying to hide the tears in her eyes, then laid the letter on the table and walked away. Being quite curious, I put my school books down on the table and slowly moved the letter in front of me. Then I began to read:
January 14, 1970
Dear Luke wife,
I am deaf. Long time I want talk my brother. But I hear nothing. I worry my family long time not hear from. My mama die, Myself not know long time. Later, find out me. My brother other die too. He drink too much. Now Luke very sick, need you come here Una help him to better healthy. Please to come very much. Myself deaf hard talk hearing people. They take him bad place for crazy people. Please God to bring you help my brother name is Luke. Jesus Love you.
Luke sister,
Dorothy Steel
I looked up and saw my mother crying. From this letter bearing broken English sentences, Mother was learning that my father was very sick and appeared to have been taken away to some mental hospital. "Mother," I asked, "Is this Dorothy Steel my aunt?"
Mother explained that my father had an older sister named Dorothy, but the two women had never met. Luke had once told her that he had practically been raised in his infant years by this deaf-mute sister.
"She's talking about my father being in this `place for crazy people', isn't she?" I persisted.
Mother wiped a tear and nodded. "Yes, Derrick. She is talking about your father." She walked back to the kitchen table, sat down beside me and took my hand in hers. For the first time in my young life, I began to learn about my father and his people. As I listened, I noticed an expression on my mother's face that I had never seen before. Now when I think back to that day, I realize that her expression was one of great relief in finally being able to talk about her years living with my father. That day, as she spoke openly and honestly with her young son who was fast growing up and becoming more like his father in so many ways, Mother knew in her heart that I would want to go there, just as I knew that she would never go back.
I could not have possibly understood, before that day, those events that surrounded the lives of my father's family and those troubled times that resulted in my mother's decision to bring her children north to St. Louis. There at the kitchen table, I listened intently as Mother began to tell me of my father, Luke Steel, and his family who lived in a small community in the northeast corner of Mississippi, called Una.
Chapter Two
In a quiet, rural area of north Mississippi, nestled in the red-clay hills of Clay County, lies Una (You-nah) community, the place where Lucius Samuel Steel was born in 1924. His mother, Savanna Steel, had three older children—Nathan, Dorothy, and Popcorn—who helped raise young Luke. Their father, William Dean Steel, had left for Chicago to find work shortly after his youngest son was born, and he never returned.
Luke grew up strong and smart, quickly learning the art of hunting and fishing, which was necessary for the provision of food for black families living in the south during the early 1900's. Luke loved the countryside and spent most of his childhood days in the woods. At age twelve he completed the sixth grade, then went to work with his brother Popcorn over in West Point at Mr. Walter Allen's taxidermy shop. Mr. Walter Allen had employed Popcorn there for as long as young Luke could remember, and on those few occasions that he had accompanied Popcorn to Mr. Walter Allen's shop, Luke had been fascinated by watching his brother remove the hides of the dead animals and prepare the skins for mounting onto reconstructed bones.
With his formal education completed, Luke was now able to devote all of his time to learning how to stuff trophies, although most of his initial duties were to clean the tools and work area. Following the gutting and skinning of the animals, Luke would assist in preparing the salt which was used for drying the skins before they were to be mounted. Mr. Walter Allen had no real use for another helper, since most of his taxidermy business could be easily handled by himself and Popcorn. However, he sensed in young Luke a genuine desire to learn the trade. Luke may have reminded Mr. Walter of his own younger days in the Pheba community when Papa John Calder had taken him in at about that same age, shortly after Mr. Walter's mother died.
Papa John and his wife, Miss Jimmie Calder, were among the first in Mississippi to promote taxidermy as a professional trade. Prior to that, folks would make feeble attempts at stuffing their game without any biological knowledge of the animal's anatomical make-up or bone structure. Papa John, however, had mastered most of the sciences taught at Pheba...
